destination brides

Tying the Knot Becomes a New West Industry

By Marjorie Smith, 3-23-06

My friend Teresa has figured out how she can pay off the mortgage on her new home on ten gorgeous acres smack in the middle of the Bozeman/Gallatin Valley building boom. She’ll do it by borrowing an additional quarter of a million and she’ll turn the property into a wedding center.

Welcome to the new economy in the New West! Our farmland’s mostly gobbled up for subdivisions, lumber-milling is long past, and mining was never worth much hereabouts but apparently there is an unlimited supply of well-heeled brides.

I’ll confess, the first time I heard “destination weddings” proposed as an economic salvation, I laughed out loud. About four years ago, the Emerson Center for Arts and Culture -- a former school that now houses much of Bozeman’s cultural life – announced major renovation of what had been the gym where long ago, I had suffered through dreaded junior high dances and PE classes. The Emerson board decreed that the gym would become a ballroom and the project would pay for itself because the renovation would include a catering kitchen. Once they got rid of the faint scent of gym socks and memories of the fierce principal dragging 14-year-old boys across the room to dance with girls a head taller than themselves, well, then the facility could be rented out for elegant weddings. Yeah, right, I thought.

A few months later I interviewed a woman who explained to me that the Gallatin Performing Arts Center (which various committees had been trying to raise money to build for 16 years) would not have the financial difficulties experienced by Billings’ Alberta Bair Theatre because the Bozeman facility would be designed so people could have weddings in the lobby.

That’s going to support the performing arts center? I asked.

“That will enable us to keep theater rental prices down so local producers can afford to use it,” she assured me.

I shook my head in disbelief. Now, perhaps I should mention here that when I got married in Bozeman many eons ago, my whole wedding cost $500 and that included the gown (which I made myself) and the flowers from my mother’s garden supplemented by two large boxes of orchids sent by friends in Maui.

Ironically, the whole weddings-in-the-lobby business plan became moot a few days after my interview with the then-executive director of the then-performing arts center project when developer Dick Clotfelter unveiled his then-plans to develop a performing arts center in the center of downtown Bozeman (but that’s another story).

Be very careful what you scoff at. I was in for some intensive in-service training in 21st Century weddings when my daughter and her long-time significant other announced their engagement. My first lesson? You can’t get away with MSU’s charming little Danforth Chapel and a cake-and-punch reception in the Student Union’s fireside room anymore. At least not in the circles which my Yuppie daughter inhabits.

I hasten to confess that I was the one who suggested that Kim and Sammy should get married in Montana rather than in Austin, Texas, where they’d lived for many years. Since I didn’t have any money to contribute to the event, I wanted to draw on my years of event management experience to be their wedding coordinator. (After all, I assured my daughter, that’s pretty much what I did in the Foreign Service, and that’s exactly what I do as associate producer of Bridger Mountain Theatre Festival.)

You know what they say: be careful what you wish for. Although I’m assured it was one of the most beautiful weddings anyone present had ever seen, coordinating weddings is definitely not a new career path for me. But in the process of putting things together a year ago, I belatedly became aware that weddings are big business – and that Bozeman and the surrounding area have become a focus for these events.

One reason, of course, is the scenery. And then, says Jill Redmon, owner of Montana Party Rentals, “What’s great is that this area has some fabulous vendors so there are lots of choices for caterers, florists, photographers, etc.”

To say nothing of venues. In January I was out at the Gallatin Valley Mall and wandered through a huge event called the Bridal Affair. That’s where I ran into Teresa Ax-Cummings, plugging her Rockin’ TJ Ranch. There were folks from at least a dozen other venues in the area – and that didn’t include two or three where I’d attended recent weddings.

A fact that I suppose will someday seem funny even to my daughter who will be paying off wedding bills for years is that while they appreciated my offer to coordinate the event, Kim and Sammy decide to have their wedding here to save money. They’d checked out some places they liked in the Austin area and, Kim told me on the phone, “They want $2000 before you even start talking food.” I suggested that my brother and sister-in-law’s new vacation complex in Bridger Canyon would make a lovely place for a wedding and it would be free. What we didn’t know was that by the time you rent a big tent and enough tables and chairs, you’re already spending more than $2000.

Teresa discovered the property she envisions as the setting of hundreds of happy memories when she was looking for a new home so that she and her second husband could get away from the house she’d shared with her first husband. She fell in love with a small house on 10 acres of green pasture with Hyalite Creek flowing through it, a pond, cottonwoods, and an unobstructed view of the Bridgers, between Bozeman and Four Corners. “Of course we couldn’t afford it,” she says. “So I tried to think of a way the property could help pay for itself. Maybe it was remembering our wedding that got me started.”

I was there when she and John got married a few years ago at the Spring Hill Pavilion which used to be one of a handful of settings for weddings conducted away from the churches in town. Others were the glamorous Gallatin Gateway Inn and the tiny Soldiers Chapel with its window framing Lone Mountain near Big Sky. In recent years there have also been a number of summer weddings at the Deer Park Chalet partway up the mountain at Bridger Bowl Ski Area. Spring Hill has the most spectacular setting: well-manicured lawns, a pretty gazebo, a rough hewn pavilion for dinner and dancing, with Ross Peak jutting up above the grounds and a panoramic view of the entire Gallatin Valley. On the other hand, it makes do with two cutesy outhouses instead of flush toilets and only the most rudimentary facility for organizing food. Even so, for many years, unless you wanted to get married in the middle of the week, you had to reserve the Spring Hill Pavilion a year and more in advance.

One of the main goals in having a destination wedding is getting spectacular wedding photographs. My first assignment as Kim’s wedding planner was to sign up Doug Loneman, an award-winning photo-journalist who had recently left the Bozeman Chronicle to become a fulltime wedding photographer. For Doug, business is booming. “Back in 2004, people signed me up in August for the next June. Now in March 2006, I’m getting calls for 2007.”

Jill Redmon says business is booming in her sector, too. Now in her eleventh year running Montana Party Rentals, Jill continues to expand her inventory. “Fashions change from year to year –we get rid of things that brides no longer want.” She confirms what I learned last year: “Brides want a certain look, and that’s what they want.” Jill thinks that’s great. “These are individual celebrations, not cookie cutter events.”

Most of the celebrations for which Jill supplies tents and tables and chairs (and glassware, dinnerware, flatware, table cloths and a bunch of accessories you’ve probably never heard of unless you’ve gotten married recently) are “destination weddings” as are those on Doug Loneman’s to-do list. “I spend a lot of time being sure that Montana’s in the photos,” he says. He did a fantastic job of that for Kim and Sammy – I’m darn sure that the most expensive wedding venue in Austin couldn’t come close to that hillside blue with lupines (which I delighted in telling all the Texans are just bluebonnets without the drawl) or that view of the Bridgers which the congregation faced for longer than we intended while we waited for the father of the bride to find his way up the mountain.

I ask Doug where the brides he photographs come from. “They’re not exactly local,” he says, “but they are connected to Bozeman. Like Kim. Some of them are people who grew up here but had to go away to make a living.” (And pay for their weddings, I say to myself.) Or, says Jill, “Their parents might have a home here, or they spent time here as children.”

On the other hand, Teresa already has 22 weddings signed up for the Rockin’ TJ Ranch and she says they’re almost all local brides.
How many wedding venues can the area and the brides and their families support? And doesn’t anybody get married in a church anymore and have the reception in a nearby hotel?

Apparently not anybody who spends the big bucks to hire Doug Loneman to record the festivities. “Of course,” he says, “now there are two chapels up at Big Sky.” Besides the Soldier’s Chapel (the one with that picture window centered on Lone Mountain) there’s the Big Sky Chapel, up by the golf course. Loneman says, “It’s just like Las Vegas, they run ‘em through every few hours.” I remember back a few years to a young friend’s wedding in Soldier’s Chapel and how we had to clear out quickly after the ceremony so the next party could start bringing their flowers in.

One thing Teresa is adamant about at the Rockin’ TJ: when she signs up a wedding, they’ve bought the ranch (as it were) for 24 hours. Perhaps it’s just as well that her husband’s career as a petroleum engineer keeps him away from home more often than not.

When the ground dries out enough so she can finish things up – the paved driveway, new sod for the lawns, a deck that will overlook the creek and pond and that Bridger view – photographers will find all sorts of grist for their lenses. The party barn she constructed is huge with a polished tile floor, high ceilings, and walls of windows. There’s a large catering kitchen, a cloak room, a cozy “holding room” for the groom and his party, and restrooms, much more elegant than the portapotties we rented last summer to avoid overloading my brother’s septic system.

Teresa shows off the huge barn doors that can be opened if it rains and the ceremony has to be moved inside from the more photogenic glade over by the pond. I tell her it’s a great idea. My rain plan last summer consisted of haunting thrift shops and buying up all the used umbrellas in town. It worked – that is to say, it kept the rain away. In a real storm, we could have shoved the dinner tables out of the way and crammed the ceremony in under the tent – but what kind of photos would even an artist like Doug Loneman get then? I think half the tension in planning these modern outdoor weddings is worrying about the weather and Teresa’s huge doors that let the outside in make an ideal backup plan.

So far the Rockin’ TJ Ranch has only hosted a couple of gigs -- a Valentine’s dinner theatre party featuring the Vigilante Theatre Company and a benefit for the Humane Society. “I probably won’t do that again,” Teresa says. “They promoted it as a Yellow Snow Festival and their tag lines was ‘Pee there or be square’ and they didn’t do a real good job cleaning up after their dogs. Yellow snow isn’t quite the image I want this place to have.” She’s looking forward to an ROTC dinner dance scheduled for April – it will be the first time she’ll see how her facility looks set up for 300 people having dinner.

I have known this bundle of energy and enthusiasm for more than a decade but I am in awe at the size of the project she has created for herself. Once the giant barn was built, she transformed a wing of the house into a day spa. She wants the bridal party to spend the entire day at the ranch. While the bride and her attendants are having massages, getting their hair and makeup done, the rest of the party can be fishing in the pond, or playing golf on a little course she intends to build, or pitching horseshoes.

So, I ask, has this venture replaced the lawn maintenance business she’s run for over twenty years? She’s not quite ready to give up lawns, she says. She wants to give her 15-year-old son a chance to work in the business this summer like his older sister did a few years ago. But she confesses that after 20 years of managing lawn maintenance crews, she’s eager for a new career.

“I love working with clients,” she says. “I love the idea a helping people make their dreams come true.”

Now, just for the record: people do still get married in the charming Danforth Chapel on the MSU campus. It holds about 75 people, costs about $150 to rent, and there has to be some sort of connection to the university, says Bobbi Reid of the Student Union staff. “The first question people usually ask is does it come with a minister,” she adds.

Ah, yes, another of the interesting dilemmas posed by destination weddings. Local clergy have an understandable lack of interest in spending their weekends running hither and yon performing weddings for folks they’ve never met, so most people end up with a minister without a congregation or with a justice of the peace or other lay person. For Kim’s wedding we were fortunate to have a friend of the family who was an ordained Episcopal priest who thought it was just about time to make another trip to Montana.

And unchurched people on a budget still have weddings at the Lindley Center, a largish log cabin that’s part of the city’s recreation department. (We had Kim and Sammy’s rehearsal dinner there last summer.) Rental there runs about $125 which includes the waiver fee for serving alcohol on public property. You have to clean the place up and get out before the next event – or the summer recreation classes conducted there – but they do have flush toilets and a fairly functional kitchen.
I was telling a friend about my $500 wedding all those years ago. “We’ve got you beat,” he said. “We ran away. All ours cost was the gas to get to Nevada, the rings, and the justice of the peace.” And, it is important to add, they are still happily married after 35 years.

I wish the same happiness for all the couples at the center of the destination weddings boom, beginning with Kim and Sammy. And I guess for the sake of Teresa’s mortgage, along with the other nice people in the wedding biz, I hope the boom doesn’t turn into a bust anytime soon.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.